I do. Slowly at first. Long, rolling thrusts that press him into the mattress, that keep my chest against his and my scent in his lungs. His arms tighten around me. He's clinging, his face pressed into the crook of my neck, and the sounds he's making are small and helpless and continuous against my skin.
I find an angle and his whole body jerks. His back arches and his mouth opens on a gasp.
"There?" I say. Smug. Certain.
"Don't stop." It's not a command. It's a plea. His voice is wrecked.
I don't stop. I keep the angle and drive harder and he cries out and his nails rake down my back and his legs lock around me. His hips are moving now, rising to meet each thrust, and the slick makes everything smooth and obscene.
His face presses harder against my neck. He's breathing me in with every thrust, filling his lungs with it. I can feel his pulse against my chest, racing, and underneath the heat and the desperation there's something else in the way he holds onto me. Like a man gripping a ledge terrified he is going to fall.
His fingers twist in my hair and pull and the pain is perfect.
His mouth finds my throat. "Don't you dare bite me," he says. His teeth graze the spot where a mating bite would go, the threat and the warning tangled together.
"I won't." I press my tongue against his pulse instead and his whole body shudders.
I feel him getting close. The tension building everywhere, his thighs trembling against my hips, the rhythmic clenchingaround me. I reach between us and wrap my hand around him and stroke and his whole body bows off the mattress.
He comes first. His whole body locks up, every muscle rigid, and he makes a sound like something breaking, high and sharp. I feel him pulse against my stomach, feel the clench of him around me, and I follow. The orgasm crashes through me and I bury my face in his hair and breathe him in and the world narrows to nothing but this.
We stay like that. His forehead against my shoulder, my arms around him. The heat hums between us, temporarily sated but already rebuilding. This is the first wave. There will be more.
After a minute, maybe two, he pulls back. His face is flushed and damp.
He climbs off me. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to me, breathing hard, and that's when I see them.
His back is lean, the shoulder blades prominent, the knobs of his spine visible beneath his skin. And across the span of it, from his shoulders to the small of his back, scars. Thin and white, long healed. Some are lines, the kind a belt leaves when the buckle catches. Some are wider, rougher, like something was dragged across the skin.
On his left side, just below the ribs, two small circles. Round and precise. The exact size and shape of a cigarette pressed against skin and held there.
I don't move. I don't touch the scars. I don't say a word.
He must feel me looking because his shoulders tighten. He reaches for the sheet and pulls it around himself.
"Don't," he says, quietly. He’s not angry. He sounds tired.
"I'm not."
"You are. I can feel you doing it. The protective alpha thing. Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"Good."
He lies down. He pulls the sheet up to his chin and turns on his side, facing away from me. The line of his body is tense, braced, the way he looked in the security room. He’s waiting for something bad to happen.
I lie down behind him. I stare at the shape of his back under the sheet and I think about the round marks. Something hard and furious rises up into my chest.
His breathing evens out but he’s not sleeping. Just resting between waves. The heat will come back. It always does.
I get up quietly, picking up my phone. I walk to the bathroom and close the door.
Viktor picks up on the first ring.
"I'm unavailable," I say. "Starting now. Five days minimum. Possibly a week."
Silence. Three seconds. Four.
